(1) Field of the invention
The present invention relates to a facsimile machine having a printer unit.
(2) Description of the related art
A general facsimile machine for sending and receiving image information is provided with an image recording unit, such as a thermal recording unit or a laser printing unit, to record received image information.
The thermal recording unit can be simply constituted at a low cost and can be miniaturized, so that the thermal recording unit is suitable for a low cost facsimile machine such as popularized or miniaturized type of facsimile machine. However, in a case where the thermal recording unit is provided in a facsimile machine, the quality of images formed on a thermal recording sheet easily deteriorates due to heat, friction, chemical interaction, oxidation, and the like. That is, there is a disadvantage in that the preservability of the thermal recording sheet used in the thermal recording unit is low.
It is possible that a printer unit coming into the market as a hard copying unit for obtaining hard copies in a general computer system such as a personal computer system is built in a facsimile machine. If the printer unit is built in a facsimile machine, a low cost facsimile machine having the high preservability of the recorded images can be provided. However, in this case, there are the following disadvantages.
A general printer unit is used for outputting figures and characters, and processes data having a structure different from that of data normally in a facsimile machine recording image information. Thus, even if a general printer unit is simply built in a facsimile machine, the general printer unit is not used for recording image information in the facsimile machine. In addition, the printer unit has an interface for effectively inputting figures and characters. Thus, figures and characters can be recorded with a high data transmission rate. However, graphic data cannot be recorded with the high data transmission rate and the amount of the graphic data to be transmitted in facsimile transmissions is generally huge, so that it takes a long time for printing graphic information for one page.